How Edge Data Center Providers are Changing the Internet’s Geography

We live in an interconnected world. As individuals consume increasing amounts of their favorite TV shows, movies, and videos online versus cable TV or satellite services, and as businesses consume more and more cloud services versus buying hardware boxes and software licenses, the physical nature of internet infrastructure is changing, according to an article from www.datacenterknowledge.com.

Over the past decade, cloud service and internet service providers have been continuously pushing to improve the quality of high-bandwidth web services to users outside of the top metros like New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.

The best approach to do that, at least until now, has been to cache the most popular content or web-application data on servers closer to the so-called “tier-two markets,” places like Phoenix, Minneapolis, or St. Paul, in an effort to quicken up load times.

This push has created a whole new category of data center service providers that call their facilities “edge data centers.”

The article explains how, “Building something that can be truly called an ‘edge data center’ requires a different set of considerations than building your standard colocation facility.” Instead, it’s about creating interconnection ecosystems in cities away from the traditional core markets like NYC, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.